The Many Hidden Talents of Peter Pettigrew
by Natascope
Summary: A day in the life of Scabbers while he is living with the Weasleys.
I do not own Harry Potter.

* * *

 **A/N: This is for Season IV of the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, Round 01**

 **Team & Position: Caerphilly Catapults, Chaser 1**

 **Base Prompt: Write about your chosen Death Eater being at home. Absolutely no Death Eater-y stuff allowed! Just the casual lives of these evil little fellas.**

 **Chosen Death Eater: Peter Pettigrew**

 **Optional Prompt: #07 - (dialogue) "If you don't eat your vegetables, you can't have any pudding."**

 **Optional Prompt: #08 - (quote) "People in their right minds never take pride in their talents." – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird**

 **Optional Prompt: #13 - (word) Tomorrow**

 **Thank you to Shirekat, darkcottonism, and parallax0hr for beta'ing this story.**

* * *

Peter Pettigrew awoke to the smell of food. Well, if he was being honest with himself, he wasn't really Peter Pettigrew anymore. For the last five years or so, he had gone by a much simpler, less well-known name: Scabbers. He chuckled to himself. Yes, he had managed to squirrel (or should he say rat) himself away with an enemy family. Here he could stay, waiting for the day of his master's return, watching for any signs.

Trying to determine the time, he noted it was bright outside and that the sun was not streaming in through the window. Since he had smelled food, it was most likely around noon. He sighed to himself as he realized that he had, once again, missed the morning ablutions. The steam from the room helped keep his coat clean and free of fleas. Oh well, maybe tomorrow…

The smell of Polly's—no, wait, Mable, or was that Molly? Er, the family matriarch's—cooking once more wafted up the stairs to Percy's bedroom. The scent was heavenly. She may have been on the other side in the war, but the woman knew how to cook. Taking in a deep breath through his nose, he used one of his many hidden talents to pick out the individual scents of the food below: chicken, bread, and a vegetable medley, all heavily slathered in butter.

Ever since his first year at Hogwarts, Peter had been collecting hidden talents, starting with his first Hogwarts Express ride. Sitting alone, wishing for friends, he had decided to reinvent himself. Some parchment was pulled out to make a list of what he was good at, but he couldn't think of anything to write. This eventually led to the creation of Hidden Talent #1: has a list of hidden talents. A month into Hogwarts, still having trouble making friends, he had strengthened his resolve to find his talents and thereby find friends. This resulted in the creation of his second hidden talent: gains a new hidden talent every month. Halloween finally saw Peter building bonds of friendship, and he continued to add new talents to his list as he developed them.

To determine what was going to be served for lunch in the Burrow, Scabbers had made use of Hidden Talent #56: can determine the contents of a meal by smell alone. While he was certainly proud of his many hidden talents, he had to be sure the list never fell into the wrong hands. Otherwise, his hidden talents wouldn't be quite so hidden nor would Hidden Talent #150: knows all of Peter Pettigrew's many hidden talents, be much of a talent anymore.

Lifting himself to his paws, Scabbers jumped down from the bed he had been sleeping on. Sticking his nose in the air, he followed the pleasing aroma out of the room and down the central staircase. When he had first started living at the Burrow, these steps had caused him immense amounts of panic. The stairs were, at best, rickety. Additionally, they consisted of only the tread, no riser. If he wasn't careful, it would be easy to accidentally fall through the stairs and injure himself. After years of practice, he had finally developed Hidden Talent #159: the ability to confidently traverse up or down any staircase. After the staircases of Hogwarts and the Burrow, he was confident there wasn't anything staircase related he couldn't handle.

Reaching the ground floor, he made his way into the kitchen just as the family matriarch called out to her brood for lunch. He scurried underneath the table to wait patiently for the inevitable dropped food, even if it was just some crumbs. With the way that some of the family behaved, there was almost always something to be scavenged from around the table. He just needed to bide his time, waiting for a morsel to drop.

* * *

The haul this meal had been plentiful. When Twin Two had thrown a roll at Twin One, it had missed, bounced off the wall, and landed in Scabbers' domain. He had quickly pulled it underneath the table so that he could devour it out of sight. He had quickly taken the old axiom to heart, 'out of sight, out of mind.' In fact, his keen ability to stay out of sight was one of his many hidden talents, #18.

He had just finished polishing off the last of the roll when one of the brats cried loudly, "Muuummmm, I want pudding!"

"If you don't eat your vegetables, you can't have any pudding," the matron responded primly.

"But _she_ has pudding!" the same brat complained.

"She's a guest of your sister's. Now eat your vegetables."

Sitting under the table, Scabbers was confused. There was a guest? Counting the visible limbs, it seemed like there were only 3 people sitting at the table… Oh, right, rats have four legs while people only have two. Maybe that should be this month's hidden talent: the ability to determine the number of people at the table by the number of legs. He'd need to think on it and decide tomorrow…

A short time later, he caught sight of a plate being held down underneath the table. He was instantly reminded of two of his hidden talents. First, Hidden Talent #53: an ability to eat anything. Second, Hidden Talent #10: the ability to eat more food than his body size should have allowed. By the time he had finished recalling his hidden talents, the plate was devoid of food. Honestly, he wasn't even sure what he had just eaten…

"Well done, Ron. I knew you could finish that zucchini," Mrs. Weasley praised her son. "Here's your pudding, dear."

Ah yes, zucchini. Peter had always liked zucchini as a human; Scabbers now knew he liked it as a rat, too. It was delicious and also fun to say _._ He scurried away to make use of Hidden Talent #27: the ability to sleep anytime, anywhere. He would take a nap to give his now-bulging stomach a chance to digest what he had eaten.

* * *

His dream of a land of cheese and honey was interrupted by a sharp pain in his arse. The shrieking of the girl ripped the last vestiges of sleep from his mind, "PERCY!" Looking around, Scabbers noted that the girl appeared to be carrying him by his tail. Normally, this coupled with the high-pitched shriek would be quite painful. However, Scabbers had found out that one of his many hidden talents, #36, was that he had a very high threshold for pain.

This talent had often proven quite useful in the past. In fact, he couldn't imagine being able to cut off one of his own body parts without the talent. Even with it, the pain had almost prevented Peter from escaping Black all those years ago. That same event, though, led to his discovering another of his hidden talents, #123: the ability to survive point-blank explosions. Living with the twin demon spawn, this proved to be a more useful talent than he had originally anticipated.

"PERCY!" the shrill voice called out again.

"What!?" the boy to whom Scabbers had attached his fate responded after appearing in the doorway.

"Your dumb rat was sleeping on my pillow!"

Well, of course Scabbers had been sleeping on her pillow. Where else would he have slept, in front of the door? The pillow was soft. The pillow was comfortable. The pillow smelled good. Her room also just happened to be the closest to the kitchen that had an open door and he couldn't make it any farther without danger of passing out.

"So?" Percy asked as he stepped just inside the room.

"Mum said he had to stay out after last time!" Percy attempted to wave her off, but the indignant girl refused to let the issue go. "He pooed in my knicker drawer!"

Scabbers chuckled to himself. That had been a good day. He had let his Marauder heritage out to play and it was looking for a way to sow some chaos. What better way than a little bit of defecation? Ah, the joys of being a rat: no one expected anything _civilized_ from you. Still, he couldn't really let that comment about him being dumb go. He attempted to curl up and bite the girl's fingers.

"Oh come on Ginny, that was months ago. Everything's been washed since."

"He POOED on my KNICKERS!"

Okay, curling up to bite her really wasn't working. It was probably that his stomach was still full from lunch. He gave up the attempt and hung limply from the girl's hand. He would instead need to plan some retribution. After all, he had Hidden Talent #68: the ability to hold a grudge far longer than most. Vengeance would be doled out, oh yes; the girl would know true fear from never knowing what he would gnaw on next!

"It's not like the twins haven't done worse."

"Just keep your dumb rat out of my room!" the girl yelled as she flung Scabbers by the tail straight at Percy. Thankfully, Percy was quick enough to catch him.

A "harrumph" from Percy and a chitter from Scabbers followed their exit from the girl's room. The door slammed closed behind them. Scabbers couldn't wait to start his gnawing campaign against the girl. Perhaps he would start tomorrow morning with some of her clothes…

* * *

Scabbers skittered along the baseboard to his own personal theme song, the adoption of which was Hidden Talent #83. Ever since Lily had forced the group to celebrate their graduation by watching that movie about that pink cat—or at least, that is all he remembered about it—the song had been stuck in his head. At this point, whenever he was trying to move around stealthily, the song was always playing in his head.

 _Duh dum, duh dum_. A skitter forward to the first piece of furniture. _Duh dum, duh dum, duh dum_. A pause before moving forward to the next piece of furniture. _Duh dum da duuuuumm, da duh duh da dum_. Finally, a dash across a doorway to get to the other side of the room, settling underneath the couch. As it happened, just in time, too. Twin One and Twin Two had just come in from outside as he made his final scurry to his couch-cave. His excursions were causing him to breathe deeply; being sneaky was quite hard work.

The rat watched the twins' legs as they loudly moved through the room, before the pair finally stopped in front of the couch. It sounded like the two were having an argument about Quidditch. The question of the hour: which team is better, the Caerphilly Catapults or the Ballycastle Bats. While Quidditch arguments were certainly not rare in the household, the twins were not usually the ones getting into an argument over it. His Marauder-sense began to tingle, signaling a trigger of Hidden Talent #73.

Before he could act on his near-supernatural talent, the twins heaved the couch, tipping it over. This had the unfortunate side-effect of removing Scabbers from his hiding spot. He attempted a mad dash for safety, managing to avoid Twin One, but Twin Two got a hand on him, pinning him to the ground. He wiggled his body and all four legs, trying his best to break the demon spawn's grasp, but it was no use. He wasn't even able to turn his head properly to bite the hellion.

A gentle shift saw Twin Two securely holding onto the rat with both hands. "Well, what do we have here?"

"It looks to me like we have a volunteer!" exclaimed Twin One.

"A volunteer you say?"

"Indeed, dear brother!"

When Peter had first moved into the Burrow, the twins were still rambunctious toddlers. However, even then no one could tell the two apart. It certainly didn't help that even at that age they constantly switched which one responded to which name. And, once Peter realized that he could tell that they were switching who responded to what, he knew that he had developed a new hidden talent, #126: the ability to tell identical twins apart. Granted, he still had no idea which one was Fred and which was George, so he just labeled them Twin One and Twin Two and left it at that.

As Twin Two finished turning toward Twin One, Scabbers saw the scariest thing he had ever seen in his life, including an angry Dark Lord. His sad, miserable existence began to play in his mind. Oh the mistakes he'd made! The choices he perhaps made poorly! The pranks he hadn't pulled at Hogwarts! Never successfully pulling off a prank at Hogwarts on Remus was undoubtedly his greatest regret. Somehow, the werewolf had always been able to tell that Peter was planning something, or was the one behind a botched prank.

Indeed, Scabbers' life was undoubtedly at an end. Somehow, the twins had managed to find a wand. Dear Merlin! What had he ever done to deserve this cruel and unusual fate? He renewed his futile struggling as Twin One started waving the wand while reading off a piece of parchment.

" ' _Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid, fat rat yellow,'_ " the wand jabbed at the poor, defenseless rat to punctuate the final statement. At the jab, Scabbers closed his eyes and resigned himself to his fate. When nothing seemed to happen, he opened his eyes to try to look at his illustrious, lustrous fur. "Did it work?" Twin One asked.

"Dunno," Twin Two replied. "Looks the same to me. You sure you read it right?"

"Yeah, I followed Bill's instructions exactly. See?"

As Twin Two was distracted by the parchment, Scabbers saw his chance. A bite _finally_ made contact with a finger, causing the hands holding him to spring open, dropping him to the floor. Landing with a soft _thump_ , the rat quickly got to his paws and scurried to a more secure hiding spot.

"Ah, we lost our volunteer," Twin One stated morosely.

"Oh well," replied Twin Two, "we can always try again tomorrow."

"YOU BOYS WILL DO NO SUCH THING! WHERE DID YOU GET A WAND?!" The shrill cries of the mother harpy could probably be heard at Hogwarts as she gave the twins a lecture that no one in the house would forget anytime soon.

* * *

Today had been a good day, except for that near-death experience with the twins. Scabbers had managed to get a bunch of sleep, eat, cause some mischief, take a nap, eat, and sleep a bit more. Actually, thanks to the twins' antics, Percy had even been so kind as to put the rat in a pocket and feed him crumbs directly from the table! Food! From a plate! It's truly the little luxuries that make life worth living.

In just a few short months, Scabbers would once again be heading to Hogwarts. His time here at the Burrow hadn't been so bad. Free room and board, free food, free entertainment, chaos that could be sown while blaming it on others… It was almost idyllic. But Hogwarts meant even better food and even more people to pin blame on!

His years at the Burrow had also shown those fools that warned about Animagus transformations. Some idiot had created a rule, Froste's Rule of Animagus Transformations, that spending prolonged amounts of time in animal form would cause the wizard to lose himself in the animal. Hah! After living as a rat for over five years, Scabbers—Peter! His name was—is!—Peter!—knew this wasn't always true. Which is how a year ago he discovered Peter Pettigrew's Hidden Talent #177: an immunity to Froste's Rule.

Scabbers shifted around to make his nest more comfortable. Ah, much better. He needed to get to sleep so he could get up early. The outlook for tomorrow was looking sunny with a high probability of gnawing.


End file.
